A fantasy novella written by Robert Silverberg and originally published in the July 1986 issue of "Asimov's Science Fiction," where it was accompanied by spectacular cover art by Gary Freeman. The story was later printed in an anthology called "Heroes in Hell." The novella is essentially a sequel to Silverberg's previous novel "Gilgamesh the King." Later, Silverberg wrote two sequels to the novella, "The Fascination of the Abomination" and "Gilgamesh in Uruk." All three stories were then combined into a novel called "To the Land of the Living." The story won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1987 and was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1986.
Our lead character is, unsurprisingly, Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, two-thirds divine, unsurpassed warrior, friend of the wild man, Enkidu, consort of Inanna, slayer of the Bull of Heaven, quester for immortality. But Gilgamesh is not now king, and he is certainly not immortal. Because Gilgamesh is in Hell.
Hell isn't really that terrible. It's a vast desert. There's no lake of fire, no shrieks of the damned, no eternal torture, unless you really want eternal torture. You can die, but you'll come back, maybe quickly, maybe not for centuries. Most sensations are less than satisfying -- food, sex, battle, none of the pleasures Gilgamesh is accustomed to really give the thrill they used to. But worst of all -- Gilgamesh is now estranged from his blood brother Enkidu.
Gilgamesh is a stubborn Bronze Age warrior. He only grudgingly learned Greek and much later English, as the New Dead filled up Hell. He prefers the old ways, and that includes hunting Hell's monsters with a sword, with a bow, with a spear. But Enkidu loved hunting with the tools of the New Dead -- with pistols, with machine guns, with grenades -- and his stubbornness is as great as Gilgamesh's. The brothers argued, they fought -- and Enkidu denounced Gilgamesh, declared that he no longer loved him, and swore to never see him again.
So as the story opens, Gilgamesh is traveling through Hell's desert, hunting and killing dangerous monsters. Soon, he manages to save the lives of two of King Henry VIII's traveling ambassadors, a pair of writers named H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Gilgamesh is injured in the process, but he and the ambassadors are taken to the court of Prester John, a powerful Christian king of medieval legend said to originate in India or Ethiopia or somewhere else far away.
Gilgamesh's wound is healed -- by none other than Dr. Albert Schweitzer -- and Prester John reveals that Enkidu has entered the service of Mao Tse-tung, leader of the Celestial People's Republic and a sworn enemy of Prester John. As the two armies prepare for war, it's decided that the conflict will be decided through single combat -- Gilgamesh vs. Enkidu -- but what weapons will be used? Bronze Age melee weapons? Or hyper-tech disruptor pistols? Will the two warriors destroy each other? Or can their legendary friendship be rekindled?
A few interesting things to focus on in this story: it's interesting that there are no non-famous characters. There are lackeys and soldiers, but everyone of importance to the story -- and even those who are only mentioned in passing -- is a recognizable, historical name. There's the main characters, Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Prester John. But there's also Albert Schweitzer, Julius Caesar, Henry VIII, William Shakespeare, Richard III, Elizabeth I, John Dee, Sir Walter Raleigh, Johann Sebastian Bach, Mao, Ernest Hemingway, Kublai Khan, and more. It's never explained how these people, several of whom lived blameless lives, could have ended up in Hell, but it's also understood that Hell operates on rules that make no sense.
You'll also note that the characters are entirely male. Elizabeth I and the Mesopotamian love goddess Inanna get mentions, but they're kept off-stage. There are no women in the story at all.
The action in the story is first-rate -- but Gilgamesh's feats of martial prowess are entirely expected, so the most fun piece of action writing is when nerdy H.P. Lovecraft, in the midst of being attacked by armored swordsmen, pops up with a pistol and starts gunning down foes, all while shouting his trademark Lovecraftian gibberish.
And the characters are -- listen, I enjoy this story, and I enjoy the characters. But the characters are fucked up in too many ways.
First, there's Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian. Howard is basically the co-lead character with Gilgamesh, as they are the only two characters who have an inner monologue, and I'm really not sure if Silverberg liked Howard or not. He's depicted as a blustering, overconfident jackass -- which might be fair, since bios of Howard say he was well-known as an eccentric in his hometown. But he's also depicted as a coward and a closeted homosexual who wrote the muscular, hyper-masculine Conan because that was the physical type he was attracted to. Howard initially mistakes Gilgamesh for his own fictional barbarian, throwing himself at Gilgamesh's feet in worship, and then spending the rest of the story in a state of frustrated, confused, embarrassed lust for the King of Uruk.
This story was written in the 1980s, when homophobia and hateful stereotyping of gay men was common enough to be completely unremarkable to many readers. And I am left wondering if Silverberg agreed with this depiction of Howard, if he believed that the only reason Howard created Conan was because he was writing his own desires on the page. If Silverberg shared the prejudices of this decade, it's a crude, sneering caricature of Howard, weak, weeping, terrified of his own desires -- and all the more uncomfortable and creepy because there's no evidence that the actual Robert E. Howard was gay.
The characterization of Lovecraft is also fairly nutty. The Lovecraft in this story is highly educated and extremely level-headed and sensible -- this is fine; I have my doubts about how sensible HPL may have been, but it's fine for fiction. In the face of danger, he doesn't hesitate to grab a gun and blaze away at his foes, gleefully chanting inspirational Elder God nonsense. And he establishes a friendly, helpful rapport with Gilgamesh. Now the actual Lovecraft was a bookish weirdo who preferred to think of himself, even as a young man, as an elderly British antiquarian -- definitely not an action hero. And Lovecraft's well-established racism would make him ill-suited to be an ambassador, and would definitely affect the way he dealt with non-white people like Gilgamesh and Prester John.
Come to think of it, the fictional Lovecraft and Howard should have both been proficient and comfortable with guns, as the Outback is clearly full of monsters, and anyone traveling there would eventually have to bring down enough firepower to kill the occasional hellhound.
Gilgamesh, meanwhile, is particularly notable for a couple different characteristics. First and most obviously, his endless devotion to his blood-brother, Enkidu. This is 100% mythology-accurate, and it informs almost everything Gilgamesh does. Why is he such a sullen, mopey son of a bitch, roaming the desert killing monsters? Because he's been mourning his brother's absence for years, and killing monsters is the only way he has to kill the pain -- except that doesn't really work, and even when he's killing things, he's still mournful and miserable.
There's also some comedy milked from the fact that Gilgamesh is so old. He has Hell divided up between the Old Dead -- everyone from his time period -- and the New Dead -- literally everyone who came after he did. He knows a few notable New Deads who are extremely famous, but he doesn't recognize anyone else. Ancient Chinese emperors? He's never heard of them, sorry. Roman emperors? He knows Caesar, and that's it. Egyptian pharaohs? There were so many of them, and they're all so dull.
And Gilgamesh's most important characteristic? He's the archetypal Barbarian Hero -- sullen, stoic, melancholy, rough-hewn, a warrior, a king, a lover, a destroyer. He's as muscular and hyper-masculine as Conan was. And for creating Conan, Silverberg implied that Howard must be gay. Does that mean that Silverberg is gay? Gilgamesh engages in all the super-macho behavior we'd expect from a barbarian warrior. He kills dozens of foes, bites off an arrow in his arm and keeps on fighting, wrestles Enkidu at the end of the story. If writing one barbarian makes the author gay, what does that mean for another author writing about a barbarian?
For what it's worth, I can find no indications that either Robert Howard or Robert Silverberg are gay.
So it sounds like I didn't like this story, but I actually did. It's got fantastic energy, tons of action, and fun characters, even if I don't think they match well with the real people. It's got drama and comedy, and they both work like a dream. The premise is absolutely insane -- a team-up with Gilgamesh of Uruk, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard in Hell, with a couple dozen historical guest stars, and Silverberg pulls it off like a star. It's very entertaining, and I love getting to go back and re-read it every few years. After all, it may be that Silverberg meant this story as a satire of modern machismo.
But I'm not the naive teenager I was when I first read this. And I know now that Silverberg was writing about one character who lived only in myth and another two characters based on racist pulp writers. I've read enough other books and experienced enough of life to be leery of Silverberg's motives and beliefs, particularly beliefs he may have held in the hyper-conservative 1980s. So while I do still enjoy the story, I also remain suspicious of it, and I recommend other readers remain suspicious of it.
If you can find it -- and I reckon it's not easy to find -- you should read it. And you should think carefully about it.
My favorite trivia about this story: According to the magazine's editor Gardner Dozois, Silverberg's novella arrived at his desk almost at the same time as a lengthy essay by Avram Davidson focused on the history and legend of Prester John. Dozois enjoyed the synchronicity, and published Davidson's "Postscript on Prester John (Adventures in Unhistory)" essay in the same issue as the novella.
Addendum: Clockmaker notes that this story is a perfect example of a Bangsian fantasy, a subgenre popularized by a turn-of-the-century author named John Kendrick Bangs, in which characters, often historical or literary, interact and have adventures in the afterlife.
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